After recent backlash on the Instagram content available to minors, Instagram has added more options for parents to restrict their teen’s media exposure. These changes went into effect on Sept. 17 and one month later the dust has finally settled.
The conflict originally arose due to a wave of sensitive and explicit content pushed to younger viewers, significantly more than other social media platforms according to Business Standard researchers. The research also showed that accounts set to age 13 were exposed to inappropriate content within 20 minutes of signing up.
“Younger adolescents are more vulnerable as their skills are still emerging and require additional safeguards and protection,” Associate Professor Rachel Rodgers said
Both existing and future users under the age of 18 will be subject to automatic private accounts. These accounts come with restricted messaging settings, restricted access to content, time limit suggestions and more. All of these changes aim to ease the concerns of parents and teens about adolescent media exposure.
“In an ever-evolving online world, this update ensures that young people can engage meaningfully and safely, fostering positive connections while still providing the protection they need,” CEO and Co-Founder Lucy Thomas said.
To further parent’s peace of mind, Instagram also introduced a supervision feature that allows parents to see who their children have messaged and what topics they have viewed. They are also able to set time limits and turn off Instagram for certain time periods.
“The three concerns we’re hearing from parents are that their teens are seeing content that they don’t want to see or that they’re getting contacted by people they don’t want to be contacted by or that they’re spending too much time on the app,” Meta Head of Product Naomi Gleit said. “So teen accounts is really focused on addressing those three concerns.”
Teenagers under 16 need parental approval before changing these settings, while those 16 or older can toggle them freely. Though it is still possible for teens to lie about their age, Meta is currently working to improve their recognition of inaccurate birth dates with AI detection and ID verification. These corrections will have to work double-time in order to fix the many accounts originally created by teens under the age minimum, who now have their age settings drastically older than their genuine age.
“I made my account when I was younger and didn’t want restrictions on my feed,” senior Molly Fingerman wrote to the Talon.
So far there have been mixed feelings as to whether or not these changes are a positive addition, or if they are simply too little too late.
“It’s sort of 50/50 for me,” senior Ava Winkle wrote to the Talon. “I think it’s a good idea to filter out some posts from teens… on the other hand though, some teens will just bypass that.”
In the US, UK, Canada, Australia and the European Union this adjustment will be in effect within 60 days of the original announcement, which is Nov. 16. An Instagram survey from the Talon found that 61% of OPHS students are currently unaware of these new updates, in part because of this delay in implementation.
“I didn’t know anything about the update,” sophomore Lily Lavinga said. “I’m curious to see how it affects me and my friends after it’s added.”
